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The unsexy IoT

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Re: The unsexy IoT

#31

Post by TeMPOraL »

> The new IoT provides valuable data about its users, their habits, daily routines and preferences.

Herein lies the problem. IoT should not provide that data to the third parties.

Also this:

> We have become more comfortable with sharing personal data, e.g. when it comes to incorporating wearables or fitness trackers into our daily routine.

That those are the only reasonable examples one could come with only shows that the "sexy" IoT is just a bunch of bullshit, overpriced toys that are only meant to monetize people's data even more. This trend should be nipped in the bud.

RE "unsexy" IoT, the article says:

> It is now almost completely based on open protocols, rather than the proprietary ones of the past that were used to tie customers to a specific vendor.

I didn't know that. Somehow I was led to believe all those protocols are closed and licensed, requiring you to join some "consortium" or "alliance", paying a $shitton entry/licensing fee. I'll look into it. If there are established open, working standards out there, then it's what I want to use in my DIY IoT / home automation solutions.

EDIT:

> (...) into your app.

That's another problem. Our obsession with apps. This is something that really needs to be culled too. One of the biggest factor that makes the "sexy IoT" barely usable is that every device has its own app. Which means, every company gets to develop a shit UI (each crappy in different way), and the time it takes to switch between apps is several seconds. This should all be standardized - I should have just one app for all my IoT, and it definitely must not be made by one of the vendors (for the same reason nobody uses software provided by e.g. printer vendors).

Re: The unsexy IoT

#32

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjc50 wrote: post #20
massysett wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what qualifies as "large" but procuring food for my family is a tedious and time-consuming task so for me at least it is large and repetitive. I'm not sure how much that can be automated though. The parent post mentioned tracking of airplanes. I wouldn't mind if a company monitored my home heating system or refrigerator and notified me if they were about to fail, as these failures can be expensive and a…

I wouldn't mind if a company monitored my home heating system or refrigerator and notified me if they were about to fail, as these failures can be expensive I'd be worried that the pre-emptive maintenance would be far more expensive. You can already get heating system insurance, but I wouldn't trust the IoT system to not over-order maintenance in order to maintain the company's profits. I saw an advert for HP's print…

Indeed. I'd be totally for such a system, but as a product, not a service. Some things really should not be managed by third parties - and sadly, our economy is moving towards exactly that.

Re: The unsexy IoT

#33

Post by skywhopper »

> IPv6 has massively increased the number of available IPs, > allowing every sensor and relay within a system to be > addressable from the public internet

... which, while necessary for the IoT dream, is a very very very dangerous thing.

Another downside of an upside is the idea of over-the-net updatable firmware for all devices in your house. The unfortunate flipside of easily-updated-by-the-vendor software is that the initial software will not be fully tested--"we can fix any 'little' bugs later"--and future releases will also not be adequately tested. Not to mention the glaring security hole when your entire house is run by devices and sensors that can be updated remotely.

It's going to get messy...

Re: The unsexy IoT

#34

Post by cormacrelf »

vdnkh wrote: post #14

I work for a company doing unsexy IoT and I've been dreaming about writing this article for months now. We're a tiny company in New Jersey whose been around in some form or another for the last 25 years, supplying remote telemetry units (RTUs) to the industrial assets industry. Helium, oxygen, nitrogen, whatever, on boats, trucks, and static sites. We also provide a monitoring platform which is where I come in. We're…

Dude! Same here! I'm moving a C#/Silverlight behemoth into React. I'm the only guy working on it, but my boss basically wants me to build something he can work on (not a JS guy!) so he doesn't have to employ me as much. I have 2 weeks left before I go back to college in another state for the semester.

And it's hard to remote because we have a poorly architected and somehow buggy SVN repo. git-svn can't load SVN history from it, so I don't get to use that. Still using VS2010 for the C# to target Silverlight 4, using my own free .edu ReSharper license, just factored out an entire Service from behind a C# Web Api by exposing solution-wide data classes.

Best bit? I don't have any concrete spec to build to. All I have is that it should look 'a bit like this'.

RIP me.

Re: The unsexy IoT

#35

Post by pjmlp »

vdnkh wrote: post #26
pjmlp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C#? Quite interesting. Anything that you can share about it? The language geek in me loves the use of C#, Java and similar safe stacks in the IoT domain. :)

We don't program the boards in C#, just the services/Silverlight. The communication methods between the boards is well abstracted - most of our devices are reached via phone number. They have a SIM card with a carrier and services essentially make a phone call to get the data. There's a lot to do with communication protocols (i.e. bytes 0-8 are the configuration, 9-12 readings, etc.) but .NET has nice support for bin…

Thanks for sharing.

I am currently aware of stuff using .NET CF, the old WinCE/Pocket PC stack or just doing straight IO control from the PC side to "dumb" firmware that just follows the given commands.

Re: The unsexy IoT

#36

Post by timthorn »

ktamura wrote: post #16

I totally echo the OP (Disclaimer: I work at a big data analytics SaaS with IoT customers called Treasure Data). The "unsexy" IoT can be really unsexy. One customer wanted to get their data out of SCADA (www.scada.com), and as it turns out, the only way to get telemetry data out of their SCADA boxes was through emails as CSV attachments. We ended up working with a third party dev shop to build a simple mail server th…

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

SMTP has its own advantages over HTTP in M2M/IoT space, both in terms of simplicity and robustness. Sure, it's not as tightly coupled or feature rich as a web API, but that might not be such a bad thing.

Re: The unsexy IoT

#37

Post by Fej »

vdnkh wrote: post #14

I work for a company doing unsexy IoT and I've been dreaming about writing this article for months now. We're a tiny company in New Jersey whose been around in some form or another for the last 25 years, supplying remote telemetry units (RTUs) to the industrial assets industry. Helium, oxygen, nitrogen, whatever, on boats, trucks, and static sites. We also provide a monitoring platform which is where I come in. We're…

What company? Curious, I also live in Jersey.

Re: The unsexy IoT

#38

Post by deelowe »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #31

> The new IoT provides valuable data about its users, their habits, daily routines and preferences. Herein lies the problem. IoT should not provide that data to the third parties. Also this: > We have become more comfortable with sharing personal data, e.g. when it comes to incorporating wearables or fitness trackers into our daily routine. That those are the only reasonable examples one could come with only shows th…

> Herein lies the problem. IoT should not provide that data to the third parties.

To an extent, maybe. There's tremendous value in this space for all kinds of things. The canonical example from Bill Joy's time is a fridge that predicts your eating habits and keeps you stocked with the items you need for dinner via automated delivery services.

> overpriced toys that are only meant to monetize people's data even more. This trend should be nipped in the bud.

"The internet is just a fad."

> I was led to believe all those protocols are closed and licensed, requiring you to join some "consortium" or "alliance", paying a $shitton entry/licensing fee.

There are plenty. This is one of the ones I'm familiar with: http://github.com/spark

> That's another problem. Our obsession with apps.

I think that even apps will be marginalized over time. People generally don't want to interact directly with software/technology at all. They want it to "just work" ala Google search. The best "IoT" devices will seamlessly augment existing interfaces and technologies instead of inventing new ones.

Re: The unsexy IoT

#39

Post by TeMPOraL »

deelowe wrote: post #38
TeMPOraL wrote: post #31

> The new IoT provides valuable data about its users, their habits, daily routines and preferences. Herein lies the problem. IoT should not provide that data to the third parties. Also this: > We have become more comfortable with sharing personal data, e.g. when it comes to incorporating wearables or fitness trackers into our daily routine. That those are the only reasonable examples one could come with only shows th…

> Herein lies the problem. IoT should not provide that data to the third parties. To an extent, maybe. There's tremendous value in this space for all kinds of things. The canonical example from Bill Joy's time is a fridge that predicts your eating habits and keeps you stocked with the items you need for dinner via automated delivery services. > overpriced toys that are only meant to monetize people's data even more.…

> The canonical example from Bill Joy's time is a fridge that predicts your eating habits and keeps you stocked with the items you need for dinner via automated delivery services.

Yes, but in this canonical example the prediction could, and IMO should, be entirely done client-side; only actual food orders would be done on-line.

> There are plenty. This is one of the ones I'm familiar with: http://github.com/spark*

Thanks! Though this still looks like the "sexy IoT" generation protocol; I was wondering about the article's assertion that "unsexy IoT" is now based on open protocols.

Re: The unsexy IoT

#40

Post by gherkin0 »

tmd wrote: post #21

> IPv6 has massively increased the number of available IPs, allowing every sensor and relay within a system to be addressable from the public internet That's a really scary idea from the security point of view and something that bothers me about the IoT craze. Every consumer device visible on the Internet should quickly and reliably self-update its software if a security issue is found and remote updates are still a…

Even if updates were easily implemented, you still have the same problems as consumer routers: once the product is off the shelves, there's little incentive for the vendor to spend money on support to even offer updates.
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